The Power of Performance: The Viafoura commitment to site optimization

Media companies and content sites invest heavily in optimizing their page load times, which is why Viafoura works to ensure that we minimize the impact our solutions and tools have on the performance of the pages they appear on.

As users move increasingly to mobile for content consumption, and as search engines begin to factor performance into search ranking, it is increasingly important to ensure that media companies, content sites and their selected vendor solutions are laser-focused on optimizing performance.

Our dedication and focus on supporting the goals of our clients continues to pay off, as we currently lead the industry with product load times that are 63% to 190%1 faster than our competitors. Our solutions enable our clients to be user-focused, providing them with the tools needed to create an enjoyable and engaging experience on their sites, which has proven time and time again to be the best long-term strategy for building online communities.

Why performance is important

Put simply, people are impatient and have almost unlimited choice. Data shows that reducing load time has a measurable and meaningful impact on bounce rates. From one recent study, reducing page load time from seven seconds to five seconds decreased the bounce rate by 10.1% and increases pageviews by 32%.2

Because users favor performance, search engines, especially Google, already factor performance into search rankings.3 As a result, not only does performance remain a bounce risk factor, it is becoming a discovery risk factor and needs to be considered as part of any SEO strategy.

Key factors for measuring third-party script performance

Bundle size and render time are the two key factors that should be measured to understand the impact of the tools you load on your site:

1

Bundle Size

Bundle size is the actual amount of data that the tool needs to load on the page in order to function. This can impact the overall size of the page, which can potentially impact performance depending on factors such as the speed of the user’s current internet connection. While a useful quantitative measure, bundle size is very indirectly correlated with how the site actually feels to users.

2

Render Time

Render time is arguably the most important factor for measuring third-party tools on your site, and is defined as the time it takes for the tool to begin loading its code until it is fully displayed on your site. Render time is the qualitative perception that your end users will have of the performance of your site, and is what search engines are most focused on with regard to ranking.

Perception is critical

When measuring bundle size and render time as it relates to incorporating the tools used on your site, it’s important to remember that perception is key. Render time will have a much larger effect on the performance of your site within Google’s algorithms, compared to bundle size. Viafoura factors both measurements into all of its offerings, ensuring efficient load times across its customers’ web pages, and keeping overall user experience in line with your brand’s standards.

Interested in learning more?

Connect with us today to learn how Viafoura can help you build, manage and monetize your audience.

Testing conducted in internal lab using similar feature configurations in real world settings. Care was taken to test on the same hardware and network conditions. Our tools were tested against all the major commenting systems including Coral Talk, Facebook comments, Spot.im, Livefyre and Disqus.

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Viafoura helps over 600 media, broadcast and entertainment brands better build, manage and monetize their content, audience and data in real time, powering more than 1.5 billion interactions across 350 million active users.